


Architects of Decay

by Regndoft



Category: Withnail & I (1986)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Pre-Canon, Yuletide, Yuletide 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 17:16:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regndoft/pseuds/Regndoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Christmas Eve and everything remains exactly the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Architects of Decay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PR Zed (przed)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/przed/gifts).



> A short piece for Yuletide 2012. I would have liked to write something better, especially for this movie, but then life happened and I'm surprised I finished it at all.
> 
> Set pre-movie; also known as "the one where all my headcanons went".

There are cracks running through the ceiling, the atrophied veins of an old decrepit building, spreading from each corner of the room.

Marwood watches the blue smoke rise with a sense of grudging acceptance. You measure time with change, but nothing ever changes in this apartment. 

Empty bottles and half-full glasses surround them where they’re lying on the worn carpet in the living room. He doesn’t need to try to stand up to know that he’d fall right over again; he’s spent enough Christmas Eves in this apartment to know that already. The taste of nicotine mingles unpleasantly with the alcohol at the back of his mouth and he coughs like the first time he tried a cigarette, fourteen and too lonely, too soft-spoken, and nothing has changed since then. 

Well, one thing. There's Withnail, brittle-boned and bitter, slumped into a chair somewhere to his right.

He could have spent this Christmas with his parents. Perhaps he even should, should have seized the opportunity he had as if by some twisted sort of obligation to his flatmate, whose parents would apparently be happy to spit in his face if he ever showed up on their doorstep again. Marwood had suggested as much earlier the same evening, when they were pleasantly tipsy and Withnail wouldn’t see it as an invitation to go on the same drunken rant about his family he did every year. 

All sound and fury he would have been then, saying much but revealing nothing; this time he’d poured himself another glass of wine instead. 

"If they're anything like my family, you’re better off like this," he’d said with a smile as empty as the bottle he’d been holding, "pitiful excuse for a life but at least it’s your own."

Marwood had wanted to protest the last part, to point to the cracks in the ceiling and the letters on the mantelpiece and the way Withnail had been placing duct tape along the windowsills just last week to keep the cold winter air out when the pipes in the house froze. To tell him about every empty space in his life Withnail had effortlessly filled, and how he never writes home anymore because he doesn’t really mind, even as he opens every window for a breath of fresh air.

Instead he’d hummed in assent and had another drink, knowing he would write the truth down later; that he’d make a map of coffee rings and ink stains in his battered notebook so as not to lose it. A reminder of the everyday and ever-the-same he should be trying harder to escape, probably. 

“I should miss them,” he’d pointed out without admitting that he hadn’t really tried. 

“They don’t miss you,” Withnail had replied, “I would know.”

And he was right, of course. London is only one city and mail boxes are scarcely hard to come by here. Even if Marwood had tried, there’d probably have been only empty replies, or no replies at all. Presumably there wasn’t much about him to miss; to his father he’d always been too pale, too short and soft-eyed. Marwood had been born during the war and it was as if the brown brick buildings and post-war depression had worn his edges down.

He’s always been drifting through life somewhere in between; between older and younger siblings, between jobs and between friends. At least he used to be drifting _towards_ something, a dream and a career, but there are wine stains on the carpet and dishes that need washing up and nothing here changes, not at all. 

The forgotten cigarette ends up burning his fingers, painfully forcing him out of his drunken contemplations and into a cursing streak that would have made his father proud and his mother lean her bent back against the kitchen counter with a sigh. 

He sits up too fast and feels his body protest immediately, a headache crashing against the inside of his skull with all the vicious retribution of a hangover and none of the benefits. The floor tilts as he tries to stand up and immediately falls down again.

Withnail makes a noise that could be either a self-pitying wail or a cackle. Considering the circumstances it’s probably the latter, but you can never be sure when Withnail is concerned. 

The next time Marwood tries to stand he manages to remain that way, and the floor only tilts slightly as he makes way towards his bedroom. That, at least, is one thing they don’t share. For a moment he pauses, considers turning around to ask Withnail whether he shouldn’t consider calling it a night either, but then he remembers that he never does and walks out.

Feather-light and far behind; perhaps that’s why the two of them had ended up here together in the first place. Withnail didn’t have anywhere to go but forward, and so he too stood stomping the same ground while all their common acquaintances from drama school had moved on. 

They hadn’t really chosen each other’s company. At some point they’d brushed shoulders and realised that out of their little troop, the artists and hippies and dreamers, they were the only ones left. Alcohol smoothened out the rough edges that common interests and misery shared didn’t. 

The varied mix of beverages still linger at the back of his throat, a sour blend of wine and gin, so he stops by the bathroom on his way out of the living room. The water tastes nothing but cold. 

It’s not that it’s a bad life, he supposes. But that doesn’t mean it’s a particularly good one either, being steeped in a routine that shaves the years off your life and realising that doesn’t matter if life has nothing better to offer than this. 

They've spent Christmas Eve this way for the past three years now, getting progressively and progressively more pissed by the passing hour until they don't have anything better to do than pray at the porcelain altar or sleep it off. The next morning Marwood will fry eggs and bacon and tomatoes while Withnail warms his cold hands on a cup of coffee, both nursing hangovers and regrets that will remain unacknowledged and unspoken. 

There will be dirty dishes and cigarette butts in the sink and before the day is over they will have opened another bottle of wine and another inane argument.

You measure time by changes, good and bad, and Marwood has long since accepted that he has nothing to measure it with.


End file.
